2007 Election

I'm glad that County Auditor Tony Fabri is being proactive about things like this:

Champaign County Auditor Tony Fabri has issued a memorandum to all department heads in which he makes clear the county's Purchasing Policy (Ord. #323) makes no allowance for employee meals. The county's Travel Policy makes an exception to this rule, but only when county employees are traveling on business.

Of course, he's hoping that nobody ever asks him for oversight for the County Nursing Home construction project, or the County Courthouse construction, or the County staff's difficulty in compying with FOIA, or the County's technology plan, or the minority contracting plan.

But I'm glad we're being clear about the lunches.

Now, this is interesting:

Several downtown Champaign bars will remain smoke-free regardless of whether the city council repeals the smoking ban for bars and clubs this week.

Carlos Nieto, who owns six downtown bars, and Jon "Cody" Sokolski, who co-owns Boltini Lounge, 211 N. Neil St., both say they will continue to ban smoking inside their bars.

"We prefer it this way," Nieto said. "Our customers prefer it this way. It's had a positive effect on sales. It's good for business."

"We're not changing," Sokolski said. "We're not going back."

I've always been a proponent of both businesses owners and consumers having choices.  I'm glad to see that some bar owners will remain smoke free voluntarily, and I still maintain that a smoking ban, local or statewide, is completely unnecessary, as I think market forces would have caused bars and restaurants to increasingly be smoke-free anyway.

After I wrote yesterday how relentlessly negative the NG is, today they have this very positive article about the swearing in of four new Champaign Unit 4 School Board members.

The Champaign school board on Monday said goodbye to four members, including board President Margie Skirvin, and welcomed new members to replace them.

Newly elected members include Greg Novak, Susan Grey, Kristine Chalifoux and Scott MacAdam. Re-elected unopposed to a two-year term was Nathaniel Banks.

The new board convened to elect David Tomlinson president, Arlene Blank vice president and Banks as secretary.

Shows you what I know. 

Congrats to the new members - I consider them all friends, and look forward to their work on the Unit 4 Board.

We had the discovery recount of the ballots in Ivesdale and the hand count matched the machine count exactly.  Very gratifying.  As I've noted before, the machines are virtually flawless when a person fills in the oval as instructed.  If you put an X or check mark, you're taking a chance.  Not a single one of the 111 ballots in Ivesdale was marked incorrectly.  Last spring I saw a number of ballots in Urbana marked incorrectly, and as I noted in our retabulation last week,  some number of ballots in other precincts were marked incorrectly, leading to different counts.

For kicks I did a query on the voters in ivesdale.  20 of the 111 were over the age of 70, 41 over the age of 60.  That was the age group I had the most concerns about with the new equipment for two reasons.  First, they would generally be less likely to have experience with a fill in the oval type of form.  Second, there is something to be said for strength when it comes to filling in the ovals. 

When we conducted the retabulation of ballots last week I also noticed the number of blank ballots for the school board race in City of Champaign 12.  184 people cast ballots, of which 25 had no votes for school board.  That's 13.6%, which seemed very high.  Of course those races were much lower profile than the city council races.  But I found it interesting that such a large number of people didn't just throw a vote in there.  I suppose that's good that people weren't voting blindly or ignorantly.  Bad that people weren't informed.

The WDWS Podcast this week features Champaign City Council members Deb Frank Feinen and Karen Foster.

One of the best pieces of legislation sponsored by Sen. Mike Frerichs this session is SB 733, which would make the ballot requirements for third-party candidates equal to what they are for established candidates.  The bill, sponsored by Frerichs in the wake of Illinois Democrats' disastrous challenge to Frerichs third-party opponent in 2006, passed out of the State Senate unanimously, but now appears dead in the House.

Illinois Greens who were heartened by the Illinois Senate's recent passage of SB 733 are calling for the House to take up this legislation instead of shelving it in favor of an inferior piece of legislation in HB 632.

"Illinois is finally on the verge of stepping out of the dark ages of ballot access rights," said Phil Huckelberry, Chair of the Illinois Green Party's Government and Elections Committee. "Now it looks like Mike Madigan is trying to keep us there after all."

SB 733 would lower ballot access hurdles for "new" party and independent candidates in Illinois to the same level as that for whichever "established" party has the highest threshold in a given jurisdiction. The Senate passed SB 733 unanimously on March 30, but on April 30 the bill was assigned to the House Executive Committee, a sign that House leadership intends to shelve it...

HB 632 would only impact signature requirements for independent candidates for state legislature. The existing requirements were found unconstitutional in Lee v Keith, forcing the legislature to rewrite at
least part of the law. HB 632 originally had similar provisions to SB 733, but was amended within the House to take away the best components. HB 632 subsequently passed the House unanimously on May 2 and is now before the Senate.

A few local Green Party activists caught up to State Rep. Naomi Jakobsson at a recent coffee to inquire as to her position on the bill, which is sponsored by State Rep. Bill Black in the House.

Tom, Kevin and I really didn't learn anything new. Tom asked her about HB 632 which is a ballot access bill for independent candidates to which she really doesn't have an answer and says she'll look into it. Right now, IL Greens are mad because a much superior bill came from the Senate, SB 733 which lowers the requirement for independent candidates at 1% of the previous vote. HB 632 sets it at 5% I believe, Illinois would still have one of the most prohibitive ballot access laws in the country. I could tell Ms. Jakobsson was a little nervous (and surprised!) to see Tom and two other Greens. From my POV, she was really eager to talk to someone else besides Tom or me, but to be fair we couldn't hog up all her time. Really, we weren't trying to accost her or anything, we just wanted to see where she stood on the issues as our representative...

I was throughly unsatisfied with her answers (she just doesn't sound like she has a grasp on the substance of legislations and it seems like EVERYTHING is esoteric to her) , but eh I'll give her credit for at least holding the coffee talk...

Shocking.

Well, the final canvass of votes for Champaign County is complete and available at our website. 

So far, we have had only one request for a discovery recount.  That will happen in Ivesdale where Tom Kirwan lost by one vote and has requested a discovery recount.  That will occur next Monday.  Any race closer than three votes probably should be automatically recounted.  I've seen the machines and I know that there are ballots that don't register sometimes, as shown in our retabulation earlier this week.  Of course, our one recount last year saw no change in votes after looking at 800 ballots in the Wysocki, Beckett, Bell, Kirchner primary.

Various officials will be sworn into office in the next few weeks.  For the first time, school board officials will take an oath of office thanks to legislation sponsored by Republican Renee Kosel.  Certainly, not a bad idea, but look at the oath:

I, (name of member or successful candidate), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully discharge the duties of the office of member of the Board of Education (or Board of School Directors, as the case may be) of (name of school district), in accordance with the Constitution of the United States, the Constitution of the State of Illinois, and the laws of the State of Illinois, to the best of my ability.
I further swear (or affirm) that:
I shall respect taxpayer interests by serving as a faithful protector of the school district's assets;
I shall encourage and respect the free expression of opinion by my fellow board members and others who seek a hearing before the board, while respecting the privacy of students and employees;
I shall recognize that a board member has no legal authority as an individual and that decisions can be made only by a majority vote at a public board meeting; and
I shall abide by majority decisions of the board,while retaining the right to seek changes in such decisions through ethical and constructive channels.

I wouldn't take such an oath.  Talk about opening a can of worms.  Most of us take an oath that includes what is included in the first paragraph.  That is county officials, state officials, and anyone else I have ever sworn in which includes sheriff's deputies, probation officers, etc.  The other oaths are so open to interpretation that quite frankly it could be argued that  they are violated all the time.  what exactly does it mean to be a protector of the school district's assets?  If you vote against a capital project and the roof starts leaking are you in violation of your oath?  The other stuff sounds harmless enough, but I can see them being twisted in ways that would actually discourage public discussion.

The new Champaign City Council will be sworn in prior to tonight's meeting - Karen Foster is the only new member, replacing Giraldo Rosales, with Deb Frank Feinen, Tom Bruno and Marci Dodds winning as well.  Mayor Schweighart will also be sworn in for his third term, after running unopposed.  Congratulations to the

The agenda is here.

The statewide smoking ban, meanwhile, is awaiting a vote as early as today by the full Illinois House, after already passing the State Senate.

This week's WDWS Newsmaker's Podcast, fresh off of last week's municipal elections, is with Champaign Mayor Jerry Schweighart.

You can listen and/or subscribe here.

The NG has tried, in today's editorial, to attempt a bit of election analysis:

It's easy to read too much into election results but Champaign voters seemed to deliver a message Tuesday: they generally are satisfied with city government but less so with their school district.

Their reasons for drawing that conclusion were that incumbent Minosca Alcantara came in last place and Nate Banks' undervotes:

But the vote totals for incumbent board member Nathaniel Banks, who ran uncontested for a two-year term, also raised some eyebrows. Although he got 6,286 votes, there were 2,957 "under votes" in his race – meaning that 2,957 people who voted in other races Tuesday consciously opted not to vote for Banks.

While I don't necessarily disagree with their conclusion, I don't agree that undervotes in an uncontested race are compelling evidence of discontent with either the District or with Banks.

A quick glance through the summary results from Tuesday show that there are multiple school board races with unopposed candidates where the undervotes were one-third or one-half of the total vote.  Look at Ludlow Board of Education, or Gifford, Armstrong, or Fisher, for examples.

High proportions of undervotes are not uncommon in uncontested races, and I think it's hard to use it as a basis from which to draw conclusions about voters attitudes.

Last night was not a good one for the Dems, but the election results weren't too surprising.  The GOP city council candidates seemed to be campaigning harder, and the MTD referendum meant higher turnout in SW Champaign precincts that tend to vote Republican.  Realistically, the winners were what most people would probably consider moderate, rather than hard right, and this may have gotten them some crossover votes.  I'm not sure that the strong response to some incidents involving the Champaign Police Department was helpful; some of the activists who addressed the city council didn't make a positive impression, and the rallies that Avery and Williams held apparently antagonized some other Dems.

By the time some IP folks convened at MOM Tuesday evening, I was already fairly sure that Feinen, Bruno, and Foster would win.  I ended up sitting next to a very pleasant guy who happened to be a Republican precinct committeman, and we ended up having an interesting conversation.  It was fun to talk about politics in terms of what worked and what didn't, rather than throwing inflammatory slogans around.  Assuming that all conservatives are white supremacists who hate poor people makes about as much sense as assuming that all liberals are potheads who never bathe.  One guy joked, "I want you to come over to the right...."  That probably won't happen, but the spectrum of political thought is very broad, and there's room for all kinds of ideas.  Karen Foster stopped by later, and she seemed very nice.

After that, I headed over to Brookens.  A couple of Dems looked grim and said that it was basically over.  One of them said that our candidates just hadn't run hard enough.  I asked if there was a problem with a couple of them being too polarizing, and was told that this hadn't really been a major issue.  Since people were just waiting for final results, I figured it'd be OK to go over and talk to some of the IP folks and Republicans I knew.  Isn't it normal for the parties to be polite to each other in Brookens, given that the campaigning is over at that point?  I was told not always.  Someone mentioned that people were getting together at a Champaign bar afterward, and that sounded fun.

It turned out that the second gathering wasn't an impromptu IP social event - it was a GOP victory party.  I almost left right away, but ended up talking to some people for a little while.  It was sort of interesting to hear different points of view.  For example, Karen Foster's brother told me that someone had posted an anonymous comment claiming that as a Republican, Karen wouldn't care about minorities or poor people.  He said that Karen had actually taken at-risk kids into her home when their parents couldn't or wouldn't care for them.  I figured that if this was the case, I could see where she might be impatient with activists whose idea of helping people was shouting at police and officials.  It turned out that the usual suspects had made yet another appearance at a Champaign City Council meeting that night.  They'd apparently walked in right after the meeting adjourned and tried to demand that the council reconvene.  So it looks like Karen has lots to look forward to.

BTW, the chair of the Champaign County GOP seemed to think a lot of Gordy and mentioned that he was frequently consulted about campaigns.  Gordy's posts here have been well-informed and level-headed, so I wasn't surprised to hear that.

The NG has their election articles up:  Champaign Council, Champaign Unit 4, Urbana District 116.

(Hat tip: It's Matt's World - and he's got thoughts about the election, too.)

Last night was the best night for the Champaign County GOP since at least 2002 (two Rick Winkel victories for State Senator) or 2000 (Tim Johnson for Congress), but maybe going even further back than that.

Let's remember what really happened last night, after all the smoke has cleared:

• The Republican Mayor was re-elected unopposed
• For a City-Wide Council seat, a Republican who had never before run for office defeated a Democrat incumbent by over 1,100 votes
• Also for Council, the leading Democrat vote-getter was a former County Board Chair who lost by almost 1,100 votes
• The Champaign County Democrats pushed three candidates for Council and two for Unit 4 School Board.  All were defeated decisively.

I think there were two themes to last nights results (at least in the City of Champaign).

The first is partisanship partisan affiliation.  The key issue in this race wasn't the smoking ban, as its proponents finished in first and fourth through sixth.  The key dividing line between the victors and the vanquished is partisan affiliation.  Even Tom Bruno, a Republican-leaning independent, ended up as the leading vote-getter but was publicly endorsed by Republican Mayor Jerry Schweighart in a letter and a radio ad.

In addition, by looking at results precinct-by-precinct, turnout was significantly higher in GOP precincts.  Rep. Tim Johnson lost the City of Champign last November, getting 46 percent of the vote and winning 15 out of 40 precincts.  Yesterday, turnout in those 15 precincts was 25.7 percent.  In the remaining 25 precincts, turnout was 13.6 percent.  And even in some high-turnout precincts lost by Johnson (City of Champaign 20 & 21, for example) Burno and Feinen ran well ahead of the pack, and Foster finished a strong third.

GOP voters were clearly motivated, and the County GOP organization did an excellent job of organizing and working door-to-door and via phones to turn out key voters.

The second theme was personalities.  A good friend mentioned to me yesterday that he thought Tom Bruno, Deb Frank Feinen and Karen Foster would win because none of the Democrat At-Large candidates had "crossover appeal," i.e., they seemed unlikely to attract votes beyond their base.  To some degree, that's true.  In 31 of the 40 precincts, the GOP candidates were clumped into either first-second-third, or fourth-fifth-sixth (including every precinct in CC 20 through 38).  They vote results make it appear as if there were two distinct slates, and that the Democrat slate had a had time picking up independents in swing precincts like CC 20 and CC 25.

I was most surprised by Annette Williams finishing in sixth place.  I thought her radio and her more visible activity would make her the leading vote getter, and I thought her and Foster would battle it out for the third seat.  I was also very surprised by the margin of victory for the three GOP candidates.

For Unit 4 School Board, I agreed with the Conventional Wisdom that Greg Novak and Sue Grey were going to win. I thought Kristine Chalifoux would do very well, but I was worried about the fourth seat.  In the end, Scott MacAdam won it pretty handily, finishing 700 votes ahead of Melodye Rosales.  I had forecasted that race versus the 2006 School Referendum results, thinking that the latter might be predictive.  But it wasn't, partly because the referendum did so poorly everywhere, and because the Novak-Grey-Chalifoux-MacAdam group did so strongly just about everywhere other than North Champaign.  Greg Novak finished in first or second place in 43 of 51 precincts.  For Sue Grey, it was 40.  For Chalifoux and MacAdam, they finished in the top four in 46 and 32 precincts, respectively.

I was most suprised here, as I was in the Council races, by the margins.  Novak and Grey got twice as many votes as Melodye Rosales.  Novak got four times as many votes as the incumbent, Minosca Alcantara.  And I was also surprised by Alcantara's last-place finish.  I thought she'd be in fourth or fifth.

Personally, it was a great night for me.  I actively helped all seven of the winning candidates, working on everything from candidate recruitment, fundraising, strategy, message, mail, radio and GOTV.  I helped some more than others, and by no means are their victories to be attributed to little old me, but I am extremely gratified that all seven were victorious.  We had great candidates and a great team, and this was the product of a lot of hard work by many people. 

After last November's painful loss to Sen. Mike Frerichs, I had a number of conversations, discussing the question of "where do we go from here?"  As a Party, I advocated that we get organized and active and work to support our local candidates in the Spring 2007 elections.  I never thought everyone would come together as well as they did, and I'm happy to have been part of the team.  Now we need to build on this foundation, and re-dedicate ourselves to making the Champaign County Republican Party the clear choice for voters desiring quality representation, open government, common-sense, diversity of ideas, cooperative problem-solving and a positive outlook.  Let's keep the Champaign County GOP moving in the right direction.

Congratulations to the winners.  And congratulations to everyone who ran - as candidates, your involvement is awe-inspiring to me, as I've never been brave enough to put my own name on the ballot.

7:30 PM:  Polls are now closed.

I have this post "stickied" to the top of the page for the remainder of the evening, and I'll be updating this post with results, analysis and opinion throughout the evening.  You can always get the latest results for all Champaign County races on County Clerk Mark Shelden's website here.

Good luck to all the candidates.

8:50 PM:  First batch of precincts are in (City of Champaign 1, 4, 5, 8 and 9).  These are all Democratic precincts, and the Democrats are leading

• Feinen: 79
• Bruno: 76
• Foster: 73
• Rosales: 178
• Avery: 221
• Williams: 165

For Unit 4:

• Grey: 112
• Rosales: 175
• Bambenek: 65
• MacAdam: 46
• Novak: 112
• Chalifoux: 72
• Jackson: 117
• Alcantara: 81

9:36 PM:  Another batch (Champaign 1, 3, 4, CC 16, 17, 21, 22, 24 & 29, Scott-Bondville and Somer)

For Council:

• Feinen: 744
• Bruno: 774
• Foster: 658
• Rosales: 557
• Avery: 588
• Williams: 472

For Unit 4:

• Grey: 1005
• Rosales: 593
• Bambenek: 424
• MacAdam: 674
• Novak: 999
• Chalifoux: 742
• Jackson: 428
• Alcantara: 393

There's lot of precincts out there, but this is shaping up to be a good night for Republicans.

9:50 PM:  I have another summary, but don't know which precincts are included.

For Council:

• Feinen: 2116
• Bruno: 2240
• Foster: 1865
• Rosales: 1309
• Avery: 1391
• Williams: 1146

Unit 4:

• Grey: 2809
• Rosales: 1406
• Bambenek: 1206
• MacAdam: 1866
• Novak: 2927
• Chalifoux: 2166
• Jackson: 1059
• Alcantara: 906

Without knowing exactly which precincts are in, it's tough to analyze.  But I think Bruno, Feinen and Foster are going to win Council seats, and Grey, Novak, Chalifoux and MacAdam are going to win School Board seats. I think the only thing left to sort out is the order of finish.

10:12 PM:  I'm calling the Council winners as Bruno, Feinen and Foster, and the Unit 4 winners as Novak, Grey, Chalifoux and MacAdam.  With a bunch of percincts reporting (Champaign 1-6, CC 1, 4-6, 8-10, 16-22, 24, 29, 31-32, 36, 37, Hensley, Scott-Bondville, Somer, Urbana 1), the totals are:

Council:

• Feinen: 2116
• Bruno: 2230
• Foster: 1865
• Rosales: 1233
• Avery: 1314
• Williams: 1086

Unit 4:

• Grey: 3324
• Rosales: 1528
• Bambenek: 1366
• MacAdam: 2121
• Novak: 3351
• Chalifoux: 2461
• Jackson: 1059
• Alcantara: 906

I'll keep updating totals until we're done, but these two races are over.  Congratulations to the winners.

10:24:  Another summary.  No changes in order.

Council:

• Feinen: 3058
• Bruno: 3312
• Foster: 2703
• Rosales: 1987
• Avery: 2058
• Williams: 1706

Unit 4:

• Grey: 3979
• Rosales: 2022
• Bambenek: 1686
• MacAdam: 2558
• Novak: 4222
• Chalifoux: 3139
• Jackson: 1499
• Alcantara: 1400

This is a great, great night for Republicans.

10:38 PM:  Final unofficial results, with no precincts remaining for

Council:

• Feinen: 4468
• Bruno: 4871
• Foster: 3909
• Rosales: 2694
• Avery: 2814
• Williams: 2329

Unit 4:

• Grey: 5342
• Rosales: 2660
• Bambenek: 2254
• MacAdam: 3366
• Novak: 5564
• Chalifoux: 4143
• Jackson: 2014
• Alcantara: 1860

Again, those are unofficial final results.  I couldn't be happier.  :-)  Post-mortem with analysis in the morning.

The ridiculous discrimination complaint brought against Memphis on Main by the Coalition to Protect People From Themselves has been dismissed.

The city of Champaign has dismissed a complaint by an Urbana woman that she was discriminated against by a downtown bar owner because of her support for the smoking ban.

Cheri Manrique, 40, of Urbana was notified in a letter a week ago that no probable cause was found to support her contention that Tom and Kelly Sellers, owners of Memphis on Main, a downtown bar, had discriminated against her on the basis of personal appearance, political affiliation and physical disability.

The charge "lacked sufficient evidence," said the notification from the city's Community Relations office.

It's nice to see the NG run this story, as the complaint was obviously frivolous from the beginning, and it was pretty striking how the NG trumpeted the allegations.

Of course, the dismissal won't stop some conspiracy theorists:

Matt Varble, a member of the smoke-free alliance who helped Manrique prepare her complaint, said he disagreed strongly with the ruling. He said Champaign ordinance prohibits discrimination in public accommodations and that the language specifically mentions cases where "an individual's patronage of, or presence at, a place of public accommodation is objectionable, unwelcome, unacceptable or undesirable."

"Clearly, there's enough evidence to proceed," Varble said. "It looks like there may be political interference as opposed to objective fact finding."

Why am I not surprised?

UPDATE:  This may not be over yet.  From an email:

The HRC office has issued a "dismissal notice" but to the untrained person it seems like that it's over, but in EEO world a "dismissal" is not even close to being interpreted the same way, as a charge is still very much active after that. All a "dismissal notice" means is that a particular entity is not proceeding or continuing to administrate the case, but the case isn't closed or inactive yet until there is a "for cause finding"  issued. Once the for cause finding is issued the IDHR (or EEOC or any other State FEPA agency) either agrees with the for cause finding or they don't agree with it, but in either outcome you are still issued a right to sue letter and then proceed to court with a lawsuit. If the FEPA or EEOC or IDHR doesn't side with the complaint most people don't proceed into court, even though they still can do so.

I am not an expert in this stuff by any means, so if that's not accurate, let me know via email or comments.  Thanks.

This has been a topic of discussion amongst the candidates for Champaign Unit 4 School Board.

The Champaign school district is proposing an Academic Alternative Evening Academy for the fall, to be housed at Central High School and operate from 4 to 8 p.m.

The school board heard details of the proposal at its meeting Monday night. The alternative school would have about 50 students in grades 10 through 12, who would have to apply and be accepted to the program.

The school is not for those with discipline problems, said Superintendent Arthur Culver, and it would not replace Columbia Center. It is also not for those with academic problems.

"We don't want this to become a school for students who are having difficulty learning or are below grade level, because we think those kids can be better served at their own campuses," he said.

Instead, it would be for students with other issues that keep them from being successful in their home schools – for example, because they are behind their peers in earning credits, they are parents, they have poor social skills or family problems, they lack self-confidence or motivation, or they have poor attendance.

Discuss.

For what little it's worth, I'm planning on being at the Brookens Center this evening to live-blog the election results.  Unless I have major problems with my Treo, I should be able to get online out there.

Also for what little it's worth, I think it's completely unacceptable that the Brookens Center has wireless internet access, but doesn't allow the public access to it for County Board meetings and events like tonight.  Taxpayers are providing the revenue to pay for it, but somehow we can't be trusted to use it.

Making government more accessible is something which both Republicans and Democrats talk about during campaigns.  Allowing journalists, bloggers and citizens access to the internet in our publicly funded buildings would be a nice step to take.  The next time you run into your County Board member, please let them know how much you'd appreciate publicly accessible wireless internet in our County's main facilities (Brookens and the Courthouse).

I'll get off my soapbox now.  Thanks for listening.

Alright, everyone report in - how busy was your polling place today?

Mahomet 1 seemed pretty brisk this morning - I was #159 a little after 8am.

Here's Tom Bruno's radio ad for his campaign for re-election to Champaign City Council, which I think is excellent.

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The editorial is here.

In our view, incumbents Bruno and Feinen deserve re-election. Bruno, who is seeking his third term, and Feinen, who served 14 years on the county board, bring to their council duties not just experience in public life and familiarity with the issues confronting the city but a common sense, non-ideological approach to the practical problems of running a city.

Our third choice for an at-large council seat is Karen Foster. As a newcomer to municipal politics, she is not as familiar with the details of some of the issues facing the city as voters might like. But her personal, educational and professional backgrounds indicate that she would be an apt student, a hard worker and a patient listener.

Looks like the Township bailout was their biggest issue.

There was obvious differences between the candidates. Feinen, Bruno and Foster each have expressed skepticism about taking over funding for the City of Champaign Township's public assistance campaign. After voters overwhelmingly rejected a property tax increase to provide increased funding for the township program, Supervisor Linda Abernathy asked the city to provide the necessary funds. In our view, it's an inappropriate and dangerous precedent for one unit of government to assume funding responsibilities for another, and it probably would result in a permanent bailout rather than one-time assistance. Finally, the voters spoke loud and clear on the issue, and council members should accept that decision.

In our view, this is the township supervisor's problem to address. However, Rosales, Williams and Avery are supportive of a proposal for the city to bail out the township.

Discuss.